Q&A: I Need It for Tomorrow’s Lesson
I Need It for Tomorrow’s Lesson
Question
Hello and blessings. We are currently learning the topic of migo in the face of a presumption, and there is a Tosafot that I did not understand. I would be happy if the Rabbi would explain it from the Talmud. Tosafot in Ketubot 25b, as follows:
The case is where he said, “This is my son, and he is a priest.” Since it says, “This is my son, and he is a priest,” it implies that we do not know whether he is his son, and he comes to testify that he is his son and that he is a priest, meaning that he is not the son of a divorced woman. For if it were known to us that he is his son, it should have said, “This son of mine is a priest,” without the conjunction “and.” But if so, he should be believed according to everyone regarding terumah and lineage by a migo, since if he wished he could have said, “He is not my son.” And one may answer that even though there is a migo, he is not believed, because according to his own statement he is a relative, as we say in HaCholtz (Yevamot 47a): “According to your words, you are a Kutite, and a Kutite is not valid for testimony,” and a person is not believed to disqualify his son. And even though Rabbi says shortly afterward, “I believe him to allow him to eat terumah, since it is in his power to feed him terumah,” apparently even though according to his own statement he is a relative, he is believed through a migo—there we certainly believe him because he has a migo even if we know that he is his son. But this migo—if we knew that he is his son, there would be no migo.
Answer
Hello.
I did not understand what was unclear in Tosafot.
He asks why a person who testifies about another person that he is his son and that he is a priest is not believed to establish his lineage and validate him for terumah. The reason he is disqualified is that he is his son, and a relative is invalid to testify about his relative. But here he has a migo, because he could have refrained from saying that he is his son and merely testified that he is a priest, and then he would have been believed. If so, he should also be believed by migo when he says that he is his son.
And Tosafot answer that according to the witness’s own statement he is invalid to testify, and in such a case a migo does not help, as is proven in Yevamot 47.
And with an added explanation: it seems that here the reasoning is stronger than in Yevamot. For here the disqualification is due to his being a relative, not due to his being a gentile. In the case of a gentile, there may be suspicion of falsehood (unless people do not undermine their own credibility), but a relative is invalid because of a scriptural decree, and there is no suspicion of falsehood regarding him. For the fact that the Torah disqualified testimony of relatives is not because of suspicion that they lie, as stated by Maimonides and the Tur and Shulchan Arukh from the Talmudic passage in Bava Batra about “he knew testimony for him and became his son-in-law.” If so, what help would the migo provide? The migo shows that he is trustworthy, but we disqualify him even though he is trustworthy. Therefore a migo does not help validate related witnesses. And in the case of a gentile one could analyze whether there is also an intrinsic personal disqualification or only suspicion of falsehood (see the topic of secular courts in Gittin).
However, if he has a migo in that it is in his power to feed him terumah, that is a stronger migo, and it does help even though according to his own words he is his father. Tosafot explain this by saying that even if we know he is his father, he still has that migo, unlike the case under discussion here. But one may add another explanation: “it is in his power” is stronger than a regular migo, as the Rosh writes in chapter 3 of Bava Batra. And perhaps that itself is the strength of “it is in his power”—that it is always in his power to do so, and it does not depend on information that we have. In that sense, “it is in his power” is stronger than a migo. If so, my added explanation is exactly Tosafot’s explanation.
Discussion on Answer
The migo is that he could testify that so-and-so is a priest without saying that he is his son. In that case he would not be disqualified, because he is not his father.
I’d be glad if the Rabbi would explain and define for us the following sentence in Tosafot:
“There we certainly believe him because he has a migo even if we know that he is his son. But this migo—if we knew that he is his son, there would be no migo.”
A partial migo? How?
Even if we knew he was his son, he would still be able to feed him terumah. So there is the migo of “it is in his power.”
But if we knew he was his son, he would not have the migo that he could simply avoid saying he is his son and claim that he is fit for the priesthood.
I didn’t understand what the migo is.